


Guiding Light

by sibley (ferns)



Category: DCU (Comics), Justice League of America (Comics)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Sex, Rape Recovery, Trans Female Character, autistic characters, sue likes astronomy trust me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-01 21:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16291862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: On her eighth birthday, Sue gets a telescope and falls in love with the stars.





	Guiding Light

**Author's Note:**

> The warning for rape is there because this covers the time in Sue's life before and after she was assaulted. It's not described in any detail, but it would be unfair not to warn for it in the main archive warnings, in my opinion. 
> 
> This whole thing came about because of two lines, one of which is from a non-canon comic, but since when have I cared about canon? The lines in question are Ralph saying Sue was on the Watchtower when Light broke in to look at the stars in Id*ntity Cr*sis, and later in the 2008 DCU Halloween Special Sue says that she'd like to use her powers to get a closer look at the stars. I thought that was sweet. She just wants to look at the sky and we should let her, dammit!

For her eighth birthday, Sue’s mom got her a telescope. It was a really fancy one too, and Sue had to stand on a stool to use it, and because she lived in New York it was nearly impossible to see  _ anything  _ in the sky, so it was pretty useless. She gave her a little astronomy booklet along with it, full of words that Sue didn’t know and pictures of alien planets. It had been something of a last ditch effort to get her actually interested in something socially acceptable.

Sue had taken one look at the telescope and fallen in love immediately.

It took her approximately half an hour for her to completely devour the booklet, which really only covered basic things like the difference between a planet and an asteroid and a moon and a dwarf planet and how stars were formed and how to spot galaxies in complex language with some interesting photographs thrown in for flavoring. This was all so much more interesting than anything down here on Earth, even if she couldn’t actually see it with her telescope.

The next night, her dad took her out to the big damp field on a property they owned on the coastline and helped her set her telescope up, fireflies winking in and out around them, and for the first time Sue was actually able to  _ look  _ at things. So  _ what  _ if she didn’t really know what exactly she was looking at? It was cool, and it was a gorgeous night, and everything felt like it was going to be okay.

Of course things couldn’t stay the same forever. The world changed. Superheroes were coming out of the woodwork. Her family moved out of New York to Central City where it would be marginally safer when she was nineteen, and she’d only lived there for a little over a year before having her official coming out party. (And screw  _ everyone,  _ just because she was the only one who laughed at her own joke didn’t mean it wasn’t hilarious.)

Then her party gets crashed. First by a superhero who is definitely just there for attention that she’s more than happy to give to him, and then by the freaking  _ Flash,  _ who is apparently just there to bail his friend out of trouble. Sue doesn’t care about him much, though. She’s seen him plenty of times. New guy, though, who loudly announced himself as the rather poorly-named Elongated Man the second he got there, is, well, a  _ new guy.  _ Sue doesn’t keep up with superhero news much, so she’s never seen him before. Which makes him interesting. A puzzle to unravel. A mystery.

_ Plus,  _ he genuinely laughs at her coming out party joke after she explains it, unlike literally everyone else she’s told it to so far, which definitely puts him in her good graces.

They also have great sex on their first date. Definitely a pro to dating someone with superpowers. Even weird ones.

So what if they get married faster than her parents would like them to? They’re not exactly in love, but she knows she loves his lifestyle, and since when has  _ love  _ mattered in a marriage, anyway? The honeymoon is weird, and somehow they both end up doing the Flash, and there are aliens, but it’s alright in the end. And then they start traveling, and then Ralph gets invited to join  _ the _ Justice League of America, and then-

Well. And then Sue falls head over heels in love with her husband, and he falls in love with her, and it’s the kind of wonderful you tell your grandkids stories about. 

Part of it is the joy of traveling. Sure, Sue’s been places. New York and Central are the only places she’s lived, but she and her family used to take trips to Europe all the time when she was younger, and of course they’d all go to Bangladesh every year to visit her grandparents. But this is different. Tiny towns in the middle of nowhere and puzzles to solve and new constellations to see, the sky crisp and clear at night instead of choked by smoke and smog. New people and new languages and new  _ everything.  _ It was everything she had ever wanted it to be.

Ralph had been the one to show her those things. He’d been the one to take her on those adventures. Somewhere along the way she fell in love with him for real, and she wouldn’t change that for the world. This crazy life she has. They have a  _ space station!  _ She’s as close to the stars as she’ll ever get, she knows it, but there are Green Lanterns and Kryptonians and men from Mars who are her  _ friends  _ now. People that she can ask about what it looks like up there, among the stars.

So when she’s bored, she goes to there. To the Watchtower. Whether it’s because she’s out of books or because there’s nothing on TV or because all her friends are busy or just because she wants to, Sue goes to the Watchtower. It’s lovely to look at the stars. Sometimes J’onn will be there too, and they can talk about space together. He knows more than she does, but she doesn’t mind. He’s one of the few people who doesn’t infuriate her just because he knows more than her.

Except one night, when she’s alone and looking up through the massive window at the stars, it all goes wrong.

The stars don’t shine as brightly, now. Sue doesn’t go up on the Watchtower alone anymore. It seems impossible, but sometimes she thinks she’s going to forget that it ever happened, and then she sees the burns on her hands and wrists, and it all comes crashing back down. So she puts on gloves so she can’t see them and pretends it never happened. Ralph is the only one who can touch her, but he has to wrap his arms around her the way he did after, so it feels okay. More like a hug than a handhold. Secure and safe and with the pressure that makes her skin stop crawling.

He does that when she cries in therapy. It’s nice. He treats her like she’s made of glass, and for once it’s completely accurate to how she feels. Sue’s trying to glue herself back together again, but she needs him to help her rearrange the pieces. It’s a horrible feeling. Needing help to get yourself back to where you were. Sue’s proud. She loves Ralph, and maybe more importantly than that, she trusts him. But that doesn’t mean it feels good to talk about her feelings.

Ralph drives her out to the mountains near wherever it is they’re staying and lets her lean against him the whole way there. He stops and pulls the roof of the convertible down and they lean their seats back and Sue looks up at the stars that used to make her feel so small, the ones that  _ still  _ fascinate her, the ones that watched  _ that man  _ hurt her.

She opens the door and jumps out onto the flat road before scrambling up onto a rock jutting out over the edge of the (fairly shallow, all things considered) ravine next to the path. Ralph rushes after her, just in case he needs to grab her. Sue tilts her face up to the stars and maps them, finding the North Star and thus Ursa Major and the Dippers easily. She can’t see any planets, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t up there watching her impassively right now.

Sue takes a deep breath of the frigid night air and  _ screams  _ up at the cold dark sky. “Look at me!” She shouts, throwing her arms out so fast it almost makes her fall. Maybe if she yells loud enough, they’ll be able to hear her up there, those emotionless balls of light way up there in the dark. “Look at me!  _ I’m still here!  _ Look at me!” The cold air stings the inside of her lungs and makes her teeth ache. “Look at me!”

That’s about when she starts crying, and then Ralph is hugging her, and then all Sue can see is the dark fabric of his shirt, not the stars, spinning endlessly above them. It’s not a perfect night. The ugly raw frightened thing inside of her is still there. It didn’t get any smaller. But the bright glowing thing in her chest that’s wormed its way through her lungs and wound through her ribs is bigger now.

It’s not going to be okay for a long time. But it’s getting better. It helps to start focusing on the sky again. She still can’t go up to the Watchtower alone, but she can use telescopes, and Hal’s constructs are safe and secure and can take her closer to the stars than the Watchtower can, anyway. J’onn helps her do research for her latest crime novel-yes, she’s taken to writing mysteries in her spare time. It gives her brain something to do. This one is space themed, since combining interests is easy, even if it seems dumb sometimes.

It sounds silly, but it’s nice to know that no matter what happens down on Earth, the stars will always be there for her.

Ralph gets her a telescope for her birthday, and they drive out somewhere secluded to set it up before laying down on a picnic blanket and huddling together for warmth. Sue’s not just shivering with cold, but Ralph doesn’t have to know that. She tucks her face into the side of his neck and hums, which makes a little shiver go through him as he tries not to laugh at how it tickles and disturb her position in the process.

“You know how you’re always telling people we’re going to have a big family one day?” Sue asks quietly.

Ralph does his best to nod without squishing her. “...Yeah? I can-I can stop, if you’d like. I just-you know I love kids, and I know  _ you  _ love kids, and I’m sorry if it makes you uncomfortable and I  _ will  _ stop I just-you know-I mean  _ we-” _

“I think we should have kids.” It’s technically the first time Sue’s actually said it out loud. Ralph’s right, she  _ does _ love kids, they both do, and it’s always been something she’s seen as an inevitability, but-she hasn’t felt like she  _ can.  _ There are still things in her life that aren’t the way that she wants them to, but for them it’s going to be a long process. One she’s willing to go through.

“Really?” He rolls so that she’s on top of him, knee in his stomach. “You-oh my God, Sue, I  _ love  _ you, I-can I tell people about this? Can I tell Bats? He’s the only one who knows anything about adoption, I think, except for Superman’s parents, and I’ve never even seen them, so-” He laughs, and Sue can’t help but grin back. “Oh my  _ God.” _

“I love you too.” Sue slides off of him so that she can look up at the sky. The air is cold and smells damp and Ralph’s heartbeat is steady under her fingers at his collarbone and the stars are beautiful this time of night, distant but still familiar. So, so familiar. “I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, I guess. And it can’t happen immediately anyway, but it can’t hurt to start working on it now, right? While I’m still…” Sue doesn’t want to say the words  _ stitching myself back together,  _ but she thinks them.

“I understand,” Ralph says, because of course he does, because he’s amazing like that. The guy she fell in love with because he was new and unpredictable and exciting who has become her rock, the most stable thing in her chaotic life.  _ Their  _ chaotic life. The joy hasn’t gone out of his voice, and she kisses him, hard, for a long time. He tangles his fingers in hers, skin on skin now that she’s working on being without the gloves that hide the burn scars more and more. “I love you, Bun. I know I just said that, and I know you know that, but I like to know you can hear it.”

“I love you so much.” Sue bumps their noses together and closes her eyes, searching for any feelings of anxiety about this. Not about becoming a parent, of course there’s all sorts of things tangled up with that, but about being intimate like this with someone. Yes, she’s been alone with Ralph loads of times since it happened-in fact, she prefers it that way-and they’re not even having sex since that would be a generally terrible idea right now, but… There’s still been worry, before. There isn’t now. “Thank you.”

“For what?” He sounds genuinely curious as he closes the small gap to kiss her a second time. Quicker this time. And softer.

Sue smiles. “The telescope. I forgot how much I missed actually owning one.” The air is so cold that she curls even closer to him, and he wraps his arms around her in one of those perfect squeezing hugs to warm her up again. “Thank you.”

Sue looks up at the stars and for the first time in her life, she doesn’t feel small.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm augustheart on tumblr.


End file.
